Some Lessons Learned the Hard Way about being Connected 24/7
On any given day I have people contacting me by voice through my office phone and smart phone, via email accessed through my laptop, IPAD and smart phone, text messages via my smart phone, as well as people contacting me through Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn,and on my Blog all accessed, as well, by my laptop, IPAD and smart phone.This simply means, if I allow myself, I can be responding to people’s inquiries (in other words, working at my job) 24/7 on four different tools through seven different communication mediums (yes insane, but I have no one to blame but myself). So out of sheer necessity I’ve learned the following lessons and have incorporated them into my routine in an attempt to put some sanity into my work and personal life.
- First, when I’m off work, I don’t answer any of the above except for personal contacts and when I receive a text signaling an emergency at camp (we have a protocol for this).
- Second, when I’m on, I look at and respond to inquiries from all 7 mediums only 3 times day – first thing in the morning (usually between 5:30 and 6:30 am), after lunch and before I go home.
- Third, my goal is to respond within 24 hours except over weekends and vacations (I’ll admit I can do better on this one).
- Fourth, I don’t answer any inquiries from any mediums when I’m with people – be it meetings, meals, casual conversations, or on the phone. I think it’s inconsiderate and inefficient use of my time and the time of the people I’m with. My goal is always to focus first and foremost on the person, or people, I’m with.
- Finally, I prioritize my responses this way – phone calls first, followed by texted messages, then emails, my blog and finally Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter (so now you know how to increase your chances of a quicker response).
I’m not perfect at all of this, but when I’m disciplined in this way my life seems to have a bit more sanity and make a bit more sense.
How the Mighty Fall
In Jim Collins’ helpful book “How the Mighty Fall” he describes the following tell-tale signs of an organization in the first stage of decline from “greatness.”- “Success, entitlement, arrogance: Success is viewed as ‘deserved,’ rather than fortuitous, fleeting, or even hard-earned in the face of daunting odds; people begin to believe that success will continue almost no matter what the organization decides to do, or not to do.
- Neglect of the primary flywheel: Distracted by extraneous threats, adventures, and opportunities, leaders neglect a primary flywheel, failing to renew it with the same creative intensity that made it great in the first place.
- ‘What’ replaces ‘why’: The rhetoric of success (‘We’re successful because we do these specific things’) replaces understanding and insight (‘We’re successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would no longer work’).
- Decline in learning orientation: Leaders lose the inquisitiveness and learning orientation that mark those truly great individuals who, no matter how successful they become, maintain a learning curve as steep as when they first began their careers.”
I consider making a regular and honest assessment of SpringHill (and myself) against these markers one of my top priorities. I have no doubt the moment I stop the self assessment, both I and SpringHill, have taken the first step towards decline.
Paying Attention to the Details
Keith Rudge and Neil Hubers One of the things I love about our Indiana camp Site Team is their incredible attention to detail. Keith Rudge our Site Director, his right hand man Neil Hubers and their team of staff and volunteers make attention to the details a significant goal in all their work. As campers, parents and guests visit our Indiana camp they experience this attention to detail in such things as the care of the grounds, the freshly stained decks and walk ways, and the well thought out safety and security procedures.
Attention to details is important part of the SpringHill Experience because our goal is always to be professional. This means we plan, we implement, we measure and we evaluate every experience as to whether we exceeded people’s expectations. And one of the best ways to exceed expectations is in the attention to the details, because people notice the details. And it’s in the details that people judge the thoughtfulness and quality of our work.
And the amazing reality about attention to detail is this – it doesn’t cost the organization any more to pay to attention to them. Because paying attention to the details is more about habits than money, more a commitment than a skill, more a practice than theory. All of which means there’s no excuse for neglecting the details.
This value of exceeding expectations by paying attention to the details goes back to the earliest days of SpringHill when Enoch Olson, our Founding Director, made sure every detail was just right before guests arrived at camp, including such things as having every sidewalk swept perfectly clean.
But the most important reason paying attention to the details is so critical in our work is because we know that if we can demonstrate to parents our trustworthiness in the details, then they’ll trust us with the most important things – caring for their children.
Prep – Do – Review
Being the Boss – The 3 Imperatives for becoming a Great Leader by Linda A. Hill and Kent Linebeck is a helpful book for new or growing leaders. It provides both a philosophical and practical approach to leading yourself, leading your network and leading your team.
For example one of the most practical suggestions the authors give is a simple, three-step tool for tackling any kind of task or situation, called Prep – Do – Review.
The first step – “Prep. Before acting, take literally a minute to prepare. Ask yourself, What am I about do to? Why am I going to do it? (That is, what goal, no matter how simple, are you trying to reach?) Who will be involved or affected, and what are their interests? And how am I going to do it?
Step two – “Do. Perform the action you prepared to take in the prep stage.”
Finally, step three – “Review. Afterward, reflect on what was done and the outcome, including any expected or unexpected consequences. Identify the lessons to be learned. How would you perform the action differently in the future?”
As you can see one the keys to using it effectively is asking a lot of the right questions. And as Hill and Linebeck state, asking good questions is “a fundamental skill that, in our experience, all effective managers possess to a high degree.”
And the beauty of Prep – Do – Review is that it can be applied to everything from simple tasks to major events, from going through your day or week, to career planning. And, if it can become a regular part of how you work, it will undoubtedly make you a more effective leader.
The Reality about Time
As I mentioned in previous posts, springtime at SpringHill is absolutely our busiest time of year as we prepare for summer camp and the 1000’s of campers we’ll serve in the next 3 months. So time is always at forefront of my mind during this season. I find myself asking – “how can I make more time to do all the things I want and need to do in the weeks ahead?”
The problem with this question is it’s usually being asked by an exhausted and fuzzy thinking person (me). It assumes that we can “make time”. But the hard truth is we can’t create time, only God can do that. The best we can do is to care for the time God has given us as a gift.
But what’s even harder to face than the fact that we can’t “make time” is the stubborn truth that we’re actually losing time. The most time we ever have in our entire life is the moment we’re born. From that minute forward, day by day, moment by moment, we’re using up our time, like water flowing from a well.
It’s these dual realities – we can’t create time but instead we’re actually losing it – that should create a sense of urgency and purpose in how we use the time given us. It means we absolutely have to be careful and intentional in how we spend every single moment of time we have left.
I’ve found the better question to ask myself during these moments of too much to do in too little time to do it is “what’s really important now and in the long run?” The answer always frees up time because it points to the best place to spend my dwindling moments.
“If You Don’t Have Time To Do It Right, When Will You Have Time To Do It Over?”
In these busy weeks of May and June, as we prepare for summer camp, all of us at SpringHill reap what we’ve sown over the past 8 months. We’ve either prepared well and have a manageable, yet challenging schedule, or we end up with an impossible schedule trying to accomplish an impossible list of tasks, in an impossibly short amount of time.
It’s during these crazy months that I often return to a simple question, attributed to the great basketball coach John Wooden, I learned while leading a Quality Assurance initiative back in my former life in corporate American – “If you don’t have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?”
You see if we haven’t done our preparation for summer camp right, we’ve literally run out of time to do it over. Unintended results can be – staff burnout, lower quality of camper experience, disappointed parents, and missed opportunities. Even if we’re able to recover by doing it over again, it’s usually at the cost of our personal health, our families, our relationships with each other, and our own spiritual well-being. None of these are worth the time we thought we were saving by not doing it right the first time.
But, as I watch our team this spring, it’s obvious, that through training and discipline, we continue to become better at doing things right the first time, and thus eliminating the need to find time to do them over again, especially in these craziest of seasons. So I’m proud of our team, as well as I’m confident of a great summer of SpringHill Experiences that’s ahead.
The Wise, the Foolish, and the Evil
Every Thursday at lunch a number of SpringHill staff view one session of the 2011 Willow Creek Leadership Summit videos. This past Thursday we listened to Dr. Henry Cloud teach on the three different types of people in the world – the wise, the foolish and the evil, and the strategies leaders need to use for dealing with each. His talk comes directly from one of the chapters in his most recent and insightful book – “Necessary Endings“.
After finishing the video we had a short debrief about what we learned, what new thoughts we each had and what challenged us. Ironically, the one challenge we all shared was that, as we watched, we all asked ourselves “which person have I been or am I now?” For each of us, it was a challenging moment of personal evaluation that cut right to the heart of many issues and relationships in our lives.
So in the spirit of seeking the light, below are the characteristics of each type of person. Take a moment and do your own self-reflection and ask “what kind of person have I been or am I now?”
Wise Person: When the light (truth) comes to them, they adjust themselves to the light, so who they are a person matches reality. In other words they seek and receive feedback and change themselves as a result.
Foolish Person: When the light (truth) comes their way, they try to adjust the light (deflect the truth) instead of changing themselves. When receiving feedback they deflect, blame and do not take responsibility for their own actions and performance.
Evil Person: When the light shines on them they want to destroy both the light and those that shine it. They have destruction in the hearts and want to retaliate against truth and those who share it.
One Step Closer to Dunking a Basketball
Our son Mitch just told my wife and I that he dunked a dodge ball for the first time yesterday. Dunking a basketball has been a goal of Mitch’s and yesterday’s feat was tangible evidence of his progress towards reaching his goal.
He was proud of his accomplishment because, as he said, “it takes lots of small steps to accomplish a goal and yesterday was one of those steps in me dunking a basketball.” Our 16-year-old understands a powerful reality about reaching goals – if we want to accomplish a difficult task or reach a challenging destination we need to break it down into achievable steps and patiently work our way through those steps.
This process of breaking down a goal, task or project into smaller steps does a number of important things that increases the odds we’ll reach our desired end.
First, it forces us to think through, plan and count the cost of all that needs to be done to ultimately accomplish a goal. Mitch knows there’s more work to be done if he’s ever going to compete in a slam dunk contest.
Second, if we ultimately don’t achieve our goal, we have the consolation of having improved and being in a better place than we were before we started. Yesterday Mitch jumped higher than ever before.
Finally, and maybe the best reason for breaking down our goals into manageable steps, is it creates many opportunities for small victories which give us confidence and motivation to keep going forward. Dunking a dodge ball is a small victory and it fired Mitch up to keep moving along his journey to achieving his goal of dunking a basketball.
What goal do you have that would become more achievable if you broke it down into smaller steps?
Funeral Perspective
I attended two funerals last week. I’ll admit I don’t like the reality of death. The Scriptures are clear – God created us to live forever. Instead death stole into the world, not as a welcomed friend, but as an enemy. So I have biblical support for my strong dislike of death.
But, though I despise death, I’ve come to appreciate funerals.
First, I appreciate funerals for the reasons we have them – they provide an opportunity to grieve our loss, to celebrate the life of a loved one, and to be with family and friends.
Yet there’s one more reason I’ve grown to appreciate funerals. It’s the serious perspective that can be gained, whether we like it or not, when we come face to face with death.
These funerals were for two very different people who died at two different places in their lives, one at the end of what we’d call a good long life, the other passed in mid-life. As I sat quietly in each service I asked myself two perspective giving questions. Each question had an eye on my potential funerals – one at the end of a long life and the other, more immanent, at mid – life.
The first question was simply “who’d be at my funeral and why”? The answer’s very revealing about the significance my life has had on others – whether it was positive, negative or neutral.
The second question is “what would be said about me?” Again the answer shines a needed light, showing what, if any, difference I made in the world. It also points to what I did or didn’t do with the gifts and abilities God gave me throughout my life.
So last week I not only attend two funerals, I had a needed perspective checkup on my life and how I’m living it.
Running for Clarity
For years I’ve been a runner. I run because it’s a simple, inexpensive way to stay in shape. Running is also an excuse to be outside, regardless of the weather. As such I’ve never owned a treadmill because, when I’ve had the opportunity to use one, I’ve found them to be well… torturous.
I have also discovered another significant benefit of running – when I run I find better solutions to pending problems, gain new perspectives on relationships, have better focus on a message that needs delivering or pray with more clarity.
The only reasonable explanation I’ve heard for this phenomenon is that running, with its physical rhythm of moving and breathing, especially outside, clears the mind of the clutter that can so easily cloud our thinking.
When I’ve had periods when I’m not running or not running much, I see a decrease in the quality of my thinking, especially around complex issues. On the other hand, as I look back on the last 30 years of my life, I can almost connect every good decision I’ve made, or idea I’ve had, to a run I’ve taken.
Now running isn’t for everyone. But doing something that includes the following three elements is a must if we’re to have any hope of experiencing clarity of thinking:
Rhythmic physical activity
That’s so simple to do it requires no thinking to do it
And keeps any potential distractions away
Such things as biking, walking, swimming or rocking in a chair (my 2nd favorite activity after running) can create the right combination of these elements as well.
So whatever the activity, making the effort to do it on a regular basis will de-clutter our minds and give us the clarity of thinking that’s necessary to deal with the complex world in which we live.
